


There were thousands of candles

by Kavi Leighanna (kleighanna)



Series: Avery'verse [7]
Category: Rookie Blue
Genre: Avery'verse, Christmas, Decorating, F/M, Kid!Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 08:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5327999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/Kavi%20Leighanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>December first is Katie's favourite day of the year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”

Sam rolls over into Andy’s pillow, smells her on the cool fabric and only vaguely remembers her getting up with the baby half an hour before.

“Daddy!”

It takes him a moment to place the tugging on the blankets, but it isn’t until he hears a gentle thud that his head comes up. He checks over the edge of the bed and finds Katie sprawled on her butt. They blink at each other for a moment.

“Hurt?”

It takes a minute, but then Katie’s face breaks out into her mother’s smile and Sam’s heart melts a little. As it tends to do when it comes to his kids.

“Daddy. There’s no more days left on my calendar.”

He bites his cheek against his grin at her careful pronunciation – ‘cal-en-dar’, it’s a word she’s still working on – and reaches over the edge of the bed. He hoists Katie up and over, listens to her happy giggle as she sprawls next to him and tugs the blanket up to her chin. Her eyes – his eyes – watch him with glee and excitement.

December first. Katie’s favourite day of the year.

Sam’s not unfamiliar with the idea of counting down to Christmas. His wife makes a big deal of moving the little star on the kids’ advent calendar that hangs on the back door. But never had he met a child who counted down to the countdown until his middle kid.

Katie likes Christmas well enough, but it’s the excitement around putting up decorations – which, if she had her way, would go up at midnight on November first – is an entirely different ball of wax in their house.

“Mommy says we get to decorate today!”

Sam chuckles, tickles her stomach just a little. Of course he knows. He and Andy have prepared for it, scheduled with her dad to get all of the ornaments and decorations including Katie’s two-foot tree they’d had to buy when she’d thrown a temper tantrum a few years before. The concept of a real tree, which Sam is absolutely adamant about, is one whose details are still lost on Katie.

“We do,” Sam agrees, rolling her onto his stomach. “After school.”

Katie’s face collapses into a frown. “Can’t I not go to school today?”

He rolls them both out of bed, does his best not to stumble under the weight of his four-year-old. She’s grown too fast. “You have to go. Don’t you want to see your friends?”

Katie puzzles over that while he strides down to the bedroom she shares with Avery and sets her on her feet just inside the doorway. “No?”

“No?” He heads to her closet, reaches in for the surprise Andy had hidden for her two weeks before.

They’d planned for this.

The gauzy skirt is for a costume, but Katie’s eyes light up as she scampers to his side. It’s red and green, of course, and Katie bounces at his side.

“For me?”

“To wear to school,” he says, very deliberately.

She reaches up and strokes at the netting. “Christmas colours.”

“Exactly,” he says, hands it over to her. She continues to stare at it reverently and he nudges her gently with his leg. “Five minutes, Katie-bear. Then I’m coming back for you.”

He leaves Katie to get dressed, showers and throws on jeans. She’s torn the room apart, of course, but she’s dressed, a white shirt and leggings making the skirt all the more startlingly holiday-themed. She’s twisting this way and that on Avery’s bed and it takes Sam a minute to realize it’s because she can see the whole outfit in the mirror above the girls’ dresser.

He laughs. “Well, Princess?”

Katie launches herself at him, gives him barely a split second to catch her with a quiet oomph. “I’m an elf, Daddy. Not a princess.”

“Well, elf or princess, there are rules about jumping off the bed.”

“Sorry, Daddy.”

“Uh huh. Not again.”

She nods solemnly before her face breaks out again and she wraps her arms so, so tight around his neck. “Thank you, Daddy.”

And he melts. Of course he melts. For his kids, he’ll always melt. So he sighs and hugs her back. “Thank Mommy. It was her idea.”

“Mommy’s so smart.”

Sam laughs as he carts her downstairs, “She is that.”

He sets Katie down in her chair, drops a kiss to Avery’s head as he snatches Danny’s spoon before he can launch it across the kitchen. Andy looks up from the island, offers him a giant grin.

“McNally.”

His wife slides a bowl of cereal towards Katie before turning her face to accept the kiss he offers. “All good?”

He nods at Katie, her bright skirt. “Like a charm.”

“Good.” She glances towards the table. “Kindergarten’s good for her.”

It’s murmured just loud enough for him to hear and Sam almost rolls his eyes. “She’s shy, sweetheart.”

She huffs. It’s a long-term discussion. Avery, who makes friends so, so easily and then Katie, who prefers quiet corners and playing by herself. Sam figures there’s nothing wrong with it, she plays just fine with other kids when she wants to, her siblings included. Andy isn’t convinced.

Andy bites her lip for a moment, then seems to shake it off. “Okay. You’re going to drop the kids off?”

He nods. “Your dad told daycare Danny would be away today. I’ll drop the girls off and we’ll go get the stuff.”

The decorations.

Andy hums her agreement. “Make sure Dad remembers he promised to come help with the garland and lights. I don’t want a repeat of last year.”

Okay, so he’d taken a bit of a tumble. It had scared Andy and the kids more than it had scared him. Sure, he’d had to get a couple of stitches in his upper arm, but it could have been much worse. He hadn’t even fallen off the roof, just caught the nasty edge of a shingle. He rolls his eyes.

“It’ll be fine, McNally.”

She offers him an utterly unimpressed look. “Remind him.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, takes her mouth again because he can. Because she’s questioning his skills. Her cheeks are pink when he pulls back and he takes great pride in the way she stumbles a little, laughs when it takes her a minute to blink herself back. She elbows him once, hard and the laughter bursts out when she connects with his kidney.

“Makes sure Danny gets cleaned up before you take him out in public,” she instructs, head held high as she heads for the table. “Come on, Ave. Let’s get you dressed.”


	2. Chapter 2

He loves his kids. He adores his kids.

But as he stands on a chair trying to pin a sprig of mistletoe to the doorframe at the back door, carols thumping through the house, he wonders if maybe he should talk to Katie about changing their annual tradition. It’s not like she’s been helping for the past ten minutes anyway.

He glances back over his shoulder to find her, dancing, spinning in the middle of a clearing she’s created in the living and yeah, this isn’t changing anytime soon.

The flash of pre-winter cold – they’re not calling for snow in the next two weeks and the kids are going to be disappointed if there’s no snow for Christmas – tells him Tommy and Avery are back, Boo racing in and around the legs of the chair he’s perched on.

“Daddy! Mama’s home!”

He glances down at the tug on his pants. “Ave, you can’t-“ The volume of the music drops suddenly and he glances gratefully back at his wife as she corrals Katie. Andy’s eyebrow goes up, but he ignores it. He’d like to see her tackle an over-excited Katie, an Avery that can’t be arsed to decorate so early, and a Danny that can’t keep his curious hands out of anything.

As it is, he’d sent Avery and Tommy to walk Boo, even though it’s getting late, dropped Danny in his playpen – he is too old for the thing, but seriously the last thing he needs is Danny shattering the handful of glass ornaments he and Andy hold near and dear – and let Katie crank the carols.

“Detective.”

He lets the mistletoe drop because honestly, honestly who cares in the face of his wife cozy and comfortable in a soft red hoodie and jeans. He kisses her hello, squeezes her arm. “How’s Fifteen?”

“Falling apart without you.”

He rolls his eyes. She grins.

“You guys have been busy.”

The living room is absolute chaos, he’s only managed to tackle half of their usual decorations between the kids and he is utterly dreading having to tidy it all up before they go to bed, but Katie’s eyes are sparkling and even Avery seems happy enough bopping to “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”.

“We’re getting there.”

She angles herself for another kiss, leans up against him like she’s had a long day at the office and is ready to sack out on the couch. Six years ago, they may have done exactly that.

He wouldn’t give this up for all of the lazy evenings in the world.

“Did you put the lights up by yourself?”

“Had to,” he murmurs just above her lips. “Your dad was watching Danny inside.”

She huffs. “Sam. I told you not to-“

“Abandon my kid inside so I could pin a couple of lights to the hooks we left up last year?”

Andy socks his shoulder hard, utterly unimpressed. “It’s not my fault you couldn’t keep your balance last year-“

“It was a couple of stitches.”

“And you’re not the one who had to deal with two sobbing girls because you were bleeding-“

“We’ve both had worse on the job!”

“They don’t know that,” she hisses, because it’s true. They’ve been damn lucky since Andy’d found out she was pregnant with Avery. A handful of grazes and a really close call with a knife when Danny’d been eighteen months old have been the worst of their injuries.

He kisses her temple. “It’s fine. No one got hurt.”

She opens her mouth to reply when a cry rips through the house. It’s Katie, her face crumpled as she takes an actual swipe at her sister and yeah, okay, Sam had known this was coming. He hears Andy sigh as he lets her go, strides into the living room and snatches Katie up before she can actually make contact with Avery.

“Okay, whoa.”

“She changed the music!”

“I don’t like Rudolph!”

It’s Andy that catches Avery, Tommy only steps behind.

“Enough,” she says, cupping their eldest’s head. Sam exchanges a look with his wife, the knowledge that the kids are at the end of their ropes. “Bath time.”

“No!”

“Katie-“ Sam starts, warning loud in his voice.

“No! We’re not done. Daddy, we’re not done decorating.”

He sees Andy murmur to her father, start steering Avery towards the stairs.

“It’s getting late,” Sam says, watching Tommy scoop Danny up. Katie’s his responsibility now. “The rest of the decorating can wait.”

“No!” The first tear leaks down her cheek.

“It’s not a question, Katie.”

And then the sobbing starts in earnest. Sam sighs, because he’d known. Of course he’d known. These are his kids. So he picks up his daughter, and cuddles her close as he climbs the stairs.

It’s bedtime.

 

An hour later, he finds Andy humming quietly as she digs through one of the boxes, pulling out the kids’ decorations they’ve made at preschool, at grade school. They all have little places of honour along the mantle, and the ones that don’t are going to have to wait. The McSwarek clan does real trees, thank you very much.

“Did you do any decorating?” she asks as the bottom step squeaks.

He hums a quiet acknowledgement as he settles his palm on her lower back, strokes up to her neck. There’s tension there, a knot from work and coming home to chaos, but he knows she wouldn’t change it. Neither would he. No matter how much of a disaster area their living room becomes.

“Katie wanted to put the garland up around the front door,” he says, wraps his arm around her waist when she straightens. Tommy had hit the road right around the end of bathtime and Sam has plans. Plans that involve this one-on-one time with his wife.

He knows from experience that the next month is going to be snatched moments. Between three kids, shopping, Fifteen, actual shifts and the sheer number of curve balls that tend to get tossed around during the holiday season. So yeah, maybe the way his hands slide over her back is a little possessive, a little desperate, but with three kids they both recognize the necessity of these stolen moments.

Andy leans into him with a sigh. “We can’t leave the living room like this.”

“Of course we can.” They can’t. They really can’t. Katie’ll be up and pawing through it before either of them can drag themselves out of bed in the morning and it’s going to end in disaster, but he’s hard pressed to care quite that much when he finally has Andy to himself.

“I’m not watching a Christmas movie.”

He spins her easily and grins when she squeaks, pressing his mouth to hers. His hands slide over her waist, down to her ass and she does him the courtesy of giving a little bounce before jumping up. He grunts a little – he’s not as young as he used to be, even if she’s just as wiry thin, even after three kids – but wraps a hand in her hair, holds her head as he stumbles towards the stairs. “A movie isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” he tells her.

He has to put her down at the bottom of the stairs – they’d learned that one the hard way – and yeah, a part of him, when he glances back at the living room winces at the chaos, but then Andy turns at the top of the stairs, calls down to him softly.

A little bit of Christmas chaos is more than worth this.

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Christmas 2015 Collection
> 
> (For those of you unfamiliar, I've been writing a Christmas fic every year for just under 10 years, I think. This year it'll be a collection of a bunch of ficlets from different universes.)


End file.
